Friday, November 9, 2018

Welcome to...Is that All I'm Good For?

Evening,
Fam…

So,
tonight’s episode of Speechless,
Kenneth hooked J.J. up with a job at his side job at the store.It was a nice gesture in theory, because he’s
supposed to redirect shoppers away from the broken self-checkout.He knows it’s a menial job and he’s better
than that, but’s a job nonetheless…until he finds the talking cardboard cutout
he replaced.It gets replaced back and
does a better job than J.J., because it’s apparently motion detector-driven,
therefore, they pay attention to it since J.J. has to use a word board they
have to read first.

J.J., being
resourceful, pushes the talking cardboard cutout to the trash compactor…until
he gets busted…and, fired.Of course, he
and Kenneth have a moment of understanding, where J.J. understands Kenneth was
trying to help him land a job while he tells Kenneth where he went wrong
getting J.J. a menial job just because he’s a crip.When Kenneth leaves, he leaves the
self-checkout manual that J.J. gets and learns.

The next
day, Kenneth finds J.J. working the self-checkout manually for customers.J.J. makes himself useful and lands himself a
job.

Now, we’re
appreciative when people try to help, but when it comes to getting a job, it’s
normally greeter, because they see “the chair”…even if they know we’re capable
of more.It’s a nice slap in the face if
there could be called one.Like a crip,
we know we can’t go out on the field in most jobs, but we’re excellent in
secretarial work.Most of us know
computers like the back of our hand, so in addition to secretarial work, we can
also do the office IT.

In my case,
I could do any system the office with training, of course.I could also use any version of Office,
thanks to my first job at the college computer lab, where we were required to
know all the programs to be able to help any student.I was always told when I was learning computers
to not be afraid to screw up, because whatever I did, could be fixed.I’ve carried that when I train people on
computers.

We used to
check insurances by making long ass calls.I figured there had to be a better way, so I spent two weeks
systematically going through all the insurances and getting us online through
their portals to save time.I made
myself useful, nobody taught me that bit.

Moral of the
story:Getting help’s nice but give us more
benefit of the doubt to be more than crip employee.We’re than what peeps see.

A life-long advocate of people with disabilities, Cindy Kolbe shares her daughter's challenges with a new spinal cord injury after an accident, as well as her own experiences as a mother trying to help her family heal.

Let me introduce Nick Moreau, an up and coming lawyer. He has everything he could possibly want: money, rising power, a loving wife. He's living the American Dream. He's cut throat, balls to the wall in nature coupled with chiseled good looks...curly brown hair, deep, dark eyes, strong jaw line.